Are underscores forbidden by your DNS provider?

To activate your custom domain name on onlinecoursehost.com, you need to add two CNAME records to your DNS Manager.

We use Amazon Web Services to create SSL certificates, and the first CNAME record comes with an underscore at the beginning of both the hostname and value.

Now, most DNS providers accept underscores at the beginning of records; otherwise, they would be incompatible with Amazon Web Services, which has one of the most used and trusted certificate authorities on the web.

However, there are a few DNS providers that do not accept this. When you try to add these records, you get an error that you should not use underscores.

Examples of Amazon CNAME records

Hostname: _b856f5646c09a16888ddf24eec16989a.courses.example.com

Value: _648f6a7df0d97aad05d7a33a346c308b.yzdtlljtvc.acm-validations.aws.

Hostname: courses

Value: dv3r8e1fwqxez.cloudfront.net.

Can the underscore be removed?

According to Amazon, the underscore for the value can be removed, and the domain name can be validated without it.

This means that instead of adding _648f6a7df0d97aad05d7a33a346c308b.yzdtlljtvc.acm-validations.aws.; you can add 648f6a7df0d97aad05d7a33a346c308b.yzdtlljtvc.acm-validations.aws., and the domain name will still be validated.

However, the CNAME hostname must always begin with an underscore. This cannot be changed or edited; else, the records would not work for the domain name.

What can you do?

When you are faced with this situation, you can either contact your DNS provider for assistance on how to bypass the issue with underscores at the backend or change your DNS provider to one that accepts underscores.

Kindly refer to this link for more information on Amazon's stance on this.

DNS providers that allow underscores

Examples of the DNS providers that allow underscores are Amazon AWS, Namecheap, GoDaddy, DNSimple, Cloudflare, etc.